


Will Make the Flowers Grow

by JehanFerres



Series: TiMER [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, TiMER (2009)
Genre: M/M, tw self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 09:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JehanFerres/pseuds/JehanFerres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan takes exactly seventeen minutes in the shower, but something seems slightly amiss when he re-emerges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will Make the Flowers Grow

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so I wrote some more JehanFerre because as everybody knows I adore JehanFerre (hence my current url which is jehanferres). Anyway this gets a trigger warning for self-harm because yeah there is some considerable discussion thereof in here. Anyway yeah this is TiMER-Verse, and was written for the lovely Xantia but also for my girlfriend (who I have been worrying a bit lately; sorry).

Jehan is small and skinny, and also covered (from what you can see) with freckles, which cover his cheekbones and his nose, right down to the tip, and he hangs on tightly around your neck, even when he’s asleep and it’s exceptionally cute. You can’t help but stroke his hair; it’s long and soft and currently loose, straggling around his collarbones (or at least you think as much; you can’t see a huge amount of his skin as he fell asleep still in his clothes on the mattress in his dingy little apartment - you came to lie with him, and he almost unconsciously clung onto you), and he practically purrs when you stroke it, even though you know for a fact that he’s fast asleep, and he has been sine you came and put your arms around him.

But there’s light starting to come in through the blue fabric over the one window in his apartment (it smells of smoke and the flowers growing on the windowsill), and you know you’ll have to get up soon, even though you really don’t want to, because you could honestly lie tangled around him forever and never want to leave, but he probably well - he isn’t a vigorous man, far from it, but you know that there are things he’ll want to do, even if telling the rest of Les Amis that you two are Destined doesn’t rank anywhere at all on this list. But you’re glad that you are together now, you suppose; you’ve loved him for a long time, and being turned down while he was sleeping with just about anyone whose bed he could get into (and, admittedly, you were doing the same) has taken its toll, because you thought that he would honestly never love you.

But here you are, even though you’ve always been a little unsure about the TiMERs, because they really just force relationships upon people. But he changed that, with all that he had said in the car; how he had been hoping that it was you. How, after you had held each-other and he had slid across back onto his own seat, he had admitted that you sleeping with everybody had hurt him as much as him doing so had hurt you, and you had apologised to each-other and you may have cried a bit, or maybe a lot, both of you. That will depend upon who you’re relating the story to. Enjolras and Courfeyrac know that you cry a lot, but others like Feuilly and Bahorel don’t; you’ll tell the first two, but you wouldn’t tell anyone else in a million years, dearly as you love them.

After a few minutes, Jehan opens his eyes, and presses his lips to yours, smiling affectionately against your mouth. You kiss back and gently stroke his hair, until he quietly unwinds himself from around you and smiles, lazily wiping a hand over his eyes to get the sleep out of them before he kisses your cheek. “‘M going to take a shower now,” he mumbles. “I… think the lock on the door’s broken.” You nod from where you’re lying, now on your back, with your arm over your eyes, and then pull the blanket which you were sleeping under (you didn’t really need it, though; Jehan, even through, and probably because of, his thick sweater and flower-patterned jeans, is extremely warm, and you can usually maintain body heat well enough) around your shoulders.

Jehan takes exactly seventeen minutes in the shower, but something seems slightly amiss when he re-emerges; he’s wearing exactly what he was wearing beforehand but he whimpers when you gently pull him close and kiss him again, and he doesn’t seem quite as enthusiastic as he did before. He still kisses you, of course, and he smiles and purrs slightly against your mouth when you stroke his hair gently, but you know that something is wrong even so, but you try not to think about it and put it to the back of your mind, telling yourself that he’s probably just tired, and even that thought leaves your head when he crawls over so he’s kneeling over the tops of your thighs and wraps his arms around your shoulders, while your arms slide softly around his waist.

After a couple of minutes of this; of you two holding each-other and kissing and him mewling and gasping and moaning softly into your mouth, you gently move your hands down to his hips and press your lips against the side of his neck, sucking bruises into the delicate skin; he turns his head slightly to the side to allow this and breathes little gasps into the air, moving his hips gently against yours to create some friction. After a couple of minutes of this, you chance gently sliding your right hand up under his sweater, but he yelps and jumps away, hunching up with his knees against his chest and a hand over his mouth.

After a couple of seconds of him doing this, he looks back up at you, and even though you can tell that he isn’t anything at all similar to calm, he’s obviously feeling at least a little better. “Sorry. I’m… I shouldn’t have done that, I’m sorry,” he mumbles, not quite able to meet your eyes. His hand goes under his sweater, and you see his fingers constricting about mid-way up his ribcage and really all you want is to hold him until he feels better again, but it’s obvious from the way that he’s looking at you that that would do nothing to help. Instead, you gently put a hand out, offering if he needs you - from the way he shrinks away from you, however, he just wants to get over this on his own.

“Jehan? What’s wrong, love?” you ask softly, reaching a hand over towards him. You try to keep your tone free from nerves, but it’s probably obvious that you’re a little scared because you’ve never seen the poor boy like this; he’s usually so… calm (partly drug-induced, admittedly) - but now he’s sat, hunched over and whimpering, with his head buried in one hand. It takes you a couple of minutes to work out what he’s actually doing to his ribs under his shirt, but when you see a thin trickle of blood run down over the waistband of his trousers it suddenly clicks. You gently put your hand on his arm, and he quietly removes the hand, wiping his eyes. You gently pull him close and murmur comfort in his ear, which you manage to keep up until he breaks down crying.

You just hold him and rub his back until he calms down again, but then you draw away slightly to look at him properly, and start trying to figure out what makes him do that to himself, because it’s obviously been going on for some time; he wouldn’t bleed that much if it hadn’t. You kiss his forehead and let him cuddle up to you, although you keep his and your arms firmly away from where you know the cuts are; they could easily get infected if they aren’t properly treated or dressed. “Are there more than just these ones?” you ask softly. He nods and looks down, seeming just as though he’s ashamed of it. “Can I…?” He looks unsure about this, so you nod; you’re happy to respect his boundaries for the time being.

But, after a couple of seconds staring down at his hands, he rolls his sleeves up, and it’s honestly so much worse than you had expected - there are raised cuts and a few scars going up the inside of both forearms, and there are crosses on the tops of his arms. They all look infected, but the crosses look considerably worse; you gently take hold of his left hand, and look at the crosses carved into his arm, before looking gently back up at him. “Jehan… have you been cleaning these at all? All of these look infected,” you say, trying to keep your fingers as far away from the cuts as you can.

“I can’t stand looking at them,” he mumbles, looking anywhere but at you. You lean over and stroke his hair with one hand. “There… are more. Quite a lot more,” he says softly, and you nod, gently touching about a centimeter away from the cross furthest up his arm. “I… think most of them are infected.” He still sounds so embarrassed and ashamed, and you just lean over to stroke his hair and kiss his forehead gently, letting him lean against you. “They don’t heal at all and they just hurt like hell and I hate it; I hate it and I wish I’d never started cutting myself and I-I-I…” He just breaks down into gaspy sobs then, and you’re suddenly terrified to even touch him in case you hurt him, but he suddenly lurches forwards and wraps his arms around you, burying his head in your chest.

“Shh, shh… It’s okay; you’ll be fine, I promise.” You stay like that, with him holding tightly onto you and you gently rubbing his back with one hand and rocking him back and forth until he calms down and stops crying. “Is it alright if I have a look at the other cuts?” you ask gently. “I don’t want you to get sick; it’s nothing else,” you tell him gently, and stroke his hair until he stops sniffing and nods. He leans away from you for a second and peels off the sweater he’s wearing and pushes his trousers down around the tops of his legs. He stares down at his thighs (because he’s kneeling down now) while you look over the cuts, trying not to touch them too much because you just know it would hurt him.

They’re worse than you had expected them to be; most of them are infected, and the ones on his ribs, which jut out slightly (and not in a healthy way), are infected to the point of weeping slightly. You cringe because oh God they look awful, but realise that he’s probably watching you, and you take hold of his hand, and kiss the palm gently. He sobs and presses his free hand against his mouth to stifle the sound, while you look over the rest of them. All up both of his arms are cut and most of the ones on his shoulders and collarbones are visibly infected, and his hips and ribs and chest have cuts, some healing, all up and down them, but the ones on his hips are by far the worst: he’s pulled his jeans down a little so that the tops of his thighs are just about exposed (and you can see that there are some cuts there, but you decide that it would be best just to take this by degrees), and you can see that some pus has bled out of the cuts on his hips: like the ones on his arms, they’re cross-shaped, and they must hurt; you know they hurt.

“Jehan?” you say softly. “Why… why did you never say anything, love?” And you honestly cannot understand it, because he knows and you know that all of your friends would support him because they love him; he’s so sweet and caring and just generally charming, and it’s impossible not to feel a horrible pang of pity for him when you see him start shuddering again.

“I… nobody could ever love somebody who looked like this,” he says, gesturing to himself. His hands linger over his hips, and you gently take hold of them. “I just… I’m not right. I shouldn’t… nobody should want to do this to themselves and you… you’re you; you’re logical and… and you don’t- you don’t-” He gasps for breath, but gives up and just dissolves into sobs.

“Jehan, look at me,” you say. He does so, tears dripping down his cheeks again. You want to put your hands on his shoulders or put your arms around him or do something to comfort him, but he’s all over cuts, and that doesn’t sound like it would be a good idea, so you take gentle hold of his hands. “That isn’t true. You know that isn’t true. I know it’s difficult to talk about this, believe me, but I don’t judge you for it. I can’t judge you for it, because you really are so, so amazing. I don’t know what to say, because telling you that it will get better but not telling you why and just hoping that it will… that won’t help, and… and you don’t deserve to be lied to, especially not by somebody who cares about you - but I’ll tell you that I hope that it does get better for you, and even if it doesn’t I promise I’ll always be here for you, because… because you mean so much to me and I can’t stand to see you hurt and I… I love you.”

At this, he practically throws himself at you, burying his head in your shoulder. Almost instinctively, even though you’re still terrified to hurt him, you wrap your arms around him in response, letting him cuddle up to you as tightly as he needs to, and pull him close, running one hand through his hair. He just sobs and wraps his arms around your shoulders, his nails digging slightly into the back of your neck, and, in response, you shush him and rub his back until the worst of the sobs and shakes stop and he squeezes your shoulders, settling on your lap and wrapping his arms around you. You pull the blankets around the two of you (Jehan shudders slightly and curls into them, and you feel bad about how cold it is), and, once he falls asleep, you carefully move him off your lap and lay him on his side on the mattress. He curls tightly into a ball after a few seconds, and you sigh, because this is honestly the worst thing imaginable for you.

But really, it doesn’t change anything, or it doesn’t change anything in a significant way.

Jehan is still Jehan, no matter the state he’s in; he’s always your sweet, angelic, brave little poet and you know you’ll always love him, so much; and you know that they last thing he needs now is to be judged or held at arm’s length as though he’s somehow frail or weak or fragile, because he isn’t. You don’t think that you could ever have gone through what he must have gone through to do this to himself without saying a word to anyone and always just seeming so happy, and he isn’t weak, he’s stronger and braver than you think you’ll ever stand a chance of being.

But now he’s told you, he just needs to know you’re still here, you know that. And, even though he’s asleep now and you do want something to eat, for the time being you just want to hold him, so you curl up under the blankets with him, and you end up holding each-other, his arms wound tightly around your neck and his head against your chest, with your arms around his waist (which you aren’t entirely sure about doing, but he seems okay, and he would move if it was hurting him), your lips pressed against the top of his head.

You don’t really know how you manage it, but somewhere in there, even though you’re terrified that your boyfriend, the person you were meant to be living with and who loved you and who you loved, was hurting and you couldn’t do anything about it, you also fall asleep alongside him.


End file.
